lazarus1024

Yup. My UT72g is very tuned for GMRS. I get 1.01 SWR measured on all GMRS channels. It works wonderfully.

I do on my UV9g. I take a pair camping so I can give the other one to my kids or my wife if we are somewhere with no cellular coverage. Sometimes it is nice to have something in camp to listen to some music/radio and I am not draining my car battery by rolling the windows down and turning the radio on. It is a nice feature to have, even if not critical.

WRQK522, sounds like testing time. If it is line of sight, even with a bit of vegetation I'd be surprised if you couldn't manage 4 miles clearly. I am pushing 70 miles with line of sight to a high repeater in southern Pennsylvanian from where I am transmitting from in Maryland from my UV9g handheld and a 771g antenna. Now it is very marginal now that the leaves are on the tree, but I can just manage. My DB-25g with a UT72g on the roof of my car manages it better. It is still not crystal clear now that the leaves are on the trees, but it is intelligible in both Rx and Tx. If you have actual line of sight, 5w will go a LONG distance. If you have a tree there, throw a rope over a branch and hoist the whole thing up. You can also get a higher gain antenna for the repeater rig. It is going to be awhile before I build my ammo can repeater because of other commitments right now, but I plan to do some kind of reasonably high gain antenna that can be mounted direct to the ammo can, or with the option of remote mounting the antenna. Something like a UT72g with the counterpoise NMO mount

I've been doing that around my house. I recently got a Simplex repeater and I've been testing with my HTs in my area to see where dead zones are to have an idea on where it'll work (the answer seems to be "very far away, but still limited by terrain at some point". I am going to test down in town and at the bottom of the river valley soon. I suspect I won't get reception from my HT, but I might from my mobile radio in my car. Maybe. Large terrain obstructions, but it isn't like half a mile of hillside in the way. Or at least not depending on exactly where you are. But it works a good mile from my house HT to HT even with a couple of hundred yards of hill in the way. I just got my base station and attic antenna setup to work with the simplex repeater, so it'll likely work even better through that stuff. Of course I can also hit a repeater about 13-14 miles away from my house and attic antenna with okay reception. Though if I walk half a mile from my house, up the ridge I have LOS or at least very NLOS to the repeater and I can then get very good reception on my HT. No 25w radio and 6dBi antenna 15ft off the ground needed.

It may well work, I can't comment on the SR-112, but the reviews are pretty mixed. I'd just make sure you test it thoroughly before you are out of any return window. What area do you want to cover? My neighborhood is quite a lot of trees (I live about a mile from a large state park in Maryland). There is a new development without many trees nearby that I talk a walk through. Now, about 3/4s of the distance is fairly thick woods, but I tested the repeater just using one UV-9g with its factory antenna (1/4 wave design) and the SR-1 sitting on top of a bookshelf in my house, about 6ft AGL. Again, my house is on a shallow ridge, about 30ft above the local terrain, but where I was walking was UP hill towards the top of the river valley the whole neighborhood is in. So I was perhaps 20ft above where my house was "looking down" for a lot of this. Still, lots of trees, some house and in some cases small terrain features between myself and my house. The radio I was walking with was also a UV-9g, with a Nagoya 771g on it. Reception was 5x5 out to around 1-1.1 mile line of sight distance and then began to fall off and ONLY because I started over the local ridge line. So it wasn't minor terrain features blocking the way anymore. Once I got about 200yds past the peak of that ridge, with maybe 20ft of vertical ridge line between myself and the repeater I'd say it dropped to about 3x4. I kept going and about 1.4 miles from my house, about .3 miles past the top ridge line and now maybe 40ft below it I was down to maybe 2x2. I could still make out the conversations I was having with myself, but I had to turn the radio volume up is listen hard. A little further and behind ANOTHER hill (a very short, but steep, more like a berm than a hill, so like 15ft high and maybe only 30ft at the base) about 1.5 miles from my house and it was still working, but you'd need to repeat the transmission 2 or 3 times to mostly make it out. Maybe 1x1 or 1x2. I am curious to try this out with my DB-25g, especially with the antenna in the attic. That's probably about 4dB higher gain, a much more powerful transmitter (another maybe 5-6dB) and better antenna performance (SWR is 1.01 on my attic antenna. The factory quarter wave is like 2.6. My Nogoya 771g is around 1.6-1.7). Oh and about 10ft higher off the ground. I'd bet that would extend my range to my HT significantly. Though terrain is STILL going to be the limiting factor. Its still going to punch through/diffract over much more strongly than what the UV-9g as the repeater is going to have been able to do, and it'll receive significantly better too. Anyway, so HT to HT, the limiting factor was LOS issues, much more than vegetation. Heavy pine forest almost certainly would cause a pretty significant drop off. Most of the woods around me are deciduous (though the foliage is pretty thick at this point in May). If you had LOS, even in thick woods, I'd imagine you could get out 3-4 miles on HTs with reasonable antennas on them. Dense pines I'd imagine would cut that in half. getting the repeater up high would still help in this instance, as not a lot of places are truly FLAT, unless you live on the plains. A 30ft tall hill between you and the receiver is going to probably do more to attenuate signal than a mile of flat hardwood forest. So the less of that hill that is in the way, the better. One final thought, with my testing, it is technically "twice as bad". Or at least twice as bad as at the receiver. Because my HT was having to punch through/diffract over everything to make it to the simplex repeater HT, get recorded, and then it was transmitted BACK to me, back through all of that stuff. I'd think, even if the signal is strong enough for reception, the loss in quality of the transmission would be at least the equivalent to a 3dB loss in fidelity. Now that wouldn't be any worse than if I was transmitting to the simplex repeater, that was then repeating it on vector exactly opposite of me, just as far away with identical terrain between the repeater and that person. That's still significantly better than me trying to reach that far away person DIRECTLY. Or you have a scenario where the other person is fairly near, or at least LOS to the repeater and I am not, what they'd hear and what I'd get back would have somewhat higher fidelity as there would be less loss in the Tx/Rx path between them and the repeater. So my testing is really the equivalent of testing two radios using the repeater who have identical signal strength paths to the repeater. Not like testing the actual signal strength directly to the repeater. Or even the repeater to a better or worse 2nd party signal path. But still fun and neat and a good way to test things on your own.

That's part of my use case that I'd like to try out. Though using a DB-25g for its much higher power output. Even if set only to medium power to preserve battery life. Toss a smaller solar panel on the dashboard and have a charge controller and small lead acid battery and you could make a $80 power kit for the mobile radio that could last indefinitely so long as the talk time wasn't excessive. You could get a couple of hours of talk time at medium power from a 7.2ah battery, ignoring any charging going on. A 25w flexible solar panel on the dashboard can realistically get about 10w of charging power (you lose light going through autoglass, even if it isn't darkly tinted). That would be enough to keep the battery charged up unless you are hammering the repeater a lot. If you wanted a heavy duty setup, a 50w flexible solar panel on the dashboard and something like a 20ah battery would cover it pretty well. OR, just use something like a UV-5g/x as the repeater and a 12v "no battery" adapter for it. Then you could probably get away with that 7.2ah lead acid battery and a 10w flexible solar panel on the dashboard and pretty unlikely to ever run out of power operating as a repeater so long as you don't park in the woods or under cover. Shorter range than a more powerful mobile radio, but having a 4.2-6dBi antenna on your car/truck and parking it, hopefully, somewhere giving you LOS between where you'll be and where you want to talk to would be a big help.

So it depends. You'll need to look at the manual of the radio and see if you can make a custom cable. Yesterday I just finished making one for my Radioddity DB-25g radios. It was a HOT mess. No fault of the SR-1, or even the manual. So the SR-1 has several pins on its input, standard RJ-45 jack and it has the pinout in the manual. My DB-25g also has the pin out for its DB-25g RJ-45 port and it also has a TRRS mic/headphone port in back, important in this case. The SR-1 NEEDS at a minimum 4 pins. PTT, mic, speaker and a ground to operate. It CAN also take a control pin (I forget what that is for, specialized radio output IIRC, not standard use) and an 8v power pin. Plus there is another ground on there if you need it with one pin not used at all. My DB-25G has several pins, including 8v power! So I could power my SR-1 through the DB-25g (the SR-1 uses very little power. It can run on a couple of AA for a few days). BUT, it does not have a Speaker pin on its RJ-45, as the handset for it is designed for mic and data (keypad) input only, no output. But I can use the TRRS port and did successfully. I have ethernet tools and components already, so all I needed was a TRRS ready to solder plug and cable. But this is where things went south. I made a cable and plugged it in to my DB-25g. I suspect a manufacturing problem in the TRRS port, because my radio is now STUCK in transmit mode. Like when inserted, the plug caused something to break and the PTT in the jack is now shorted. Hopefully Radioddity will replace it (working with them now) as nothing will fix it and no way to get at the port to replace it as its on the backside of the board inside the radio and several components would have to be desoldered to remove the board to get at the port. Even if they won't replace it, not worth the huge amount of hassle to desolder half a dozen major components just to try to get the board out and SEE what the problem is. I have a 2nd DB-25g, from my car. So I tried it on that. Didn't work well. Near as I can tell, the TRRS port is a bit too deep. So I basically have to have the jack HELD pushed in for the SR-1 to work at all. I took the cable I made with a file and shaved the ground connector to make the jack able to insert a fraction of a millimeter deeper and that works now. I still have to really push the cable in, but it'll stay inserted deep enough to work. So not super happy with Radioddity on this that their TRRS port seems to be really crappy manufacture (looking in it and comparing to several other devices I have with TRS and TRRS ports, it seems to be a VERY bad design). Anyway, it DOES work. And hopefully whatever replacement I end up with for the now broken radio, the TRRS port works correctly. One thing that did occur to me with those TRRS ports, is you probably could build a duplex repeater with a pair of DB-25g radios. Just set the Tx radio to VOX and plug in a TRRS cable from one radio to the other one and set them to the correct Rx frequency on one and the Tx frequency on the other one. I might give that a try at some point to see if it works as a VERY cheap Duplex repeater. AND, if I made a Y cable, I could plug the SR-1 in there between the radios and set it up for annunciator mode so it can be FCC compliant to send out a morse code station identifier at the correct intervals... Ignoring the SR-1 cost, a pair of DB-25g radios is about $230 right now. Talk about stupid cheap GMRS duplex repeater! Of course you'll have to invest in the power supplies and I HIGHLY doubt the setup could be used at full power for more than maybe 30% duty cycle. But I'd imagine if you set it to low power (about 5.5w measured) you could probably use 100%, or near enough, duty cycle. Anyway, its a project for me to try at some point. Not sure I'd get a duplexer, so I'd probably try it with my 6dBi antenna in the attic and set my UT-72g on the top shelf of my basement above where the radios would sit. That puts it JUST at ground level. That'll get about 15ft of vertical separation, fairly high gain and I'd probably try it with the radios set to low power. Hopefully that won't cause desense issues. At any rate, it seems worth a try to see if it works at all at some point. Literally the only thing I'd be in for is a TRRS male to male cable to try it out. And if it does work at all, I can always see about tweaking things, like get a duplexer to use the existing attic 6dBi antenna, make a Y-cable to use my SR-1 as a station identifier. So, anyway, back to making other radios work, I'd imagine some can. You'll need to look at the manual to see if it has the pin out of any ports on it. Many use ONLY mic in and data in on the handset controller for the radio. HOWEVER, most have at least a mono TS speaker jack on them. You CAN make a combo cable to use the ground and speaker output from a TS jack and cable and run that in to the RJ45 jack you make and then a data cable for the front RJ45 port that'll take 8v power (if you want), mic, PTT and ground. I tried that with my DB-25g as I was having better success initially getting the speaker and ground to work on the TRRS port and the PTT and mic was not working well/at all until I shaved the plus on my custom cable. So the combo cable using the TRRS jack for speaker+ground and the data jack for 8v power, ground, PTT and mic DID work. But poorly because of the TRRS jack issues. Since I shaved the TRRS plug and it works just fine that way, I abandoned the Y-cable I made to use the data and TRRS ports on the radio. Looking online at common GMRS mobile radios, the DB-25g is the ONLY one I can find that has the pinout for the RJ45 port and the TRRS port in the manual. The DB-25g is also the only one I can find that has a TRRS port on it. Most are just TS or TRS for mono or stereo speakers, no PTT or mic input on that port. A couple GMRS mobile base stations DO have speakers on their handsets. So they COULD be wired to work with an SR-1. However, the couple I found that have speakers in the handsets also, do NOT have the pinouts of that handset port in the manual. I didn't look at the Midland micro mobiles mind you. They might have the pinouts in the manual. I'd contact the manufacturer, or at least the seller (like buy two way radios), I'd imagine even money they'd get you the info. One other thing I found with the DB-25g. On my UV-9g, I had to set one channel to Rx and one to Tx, because I cannot set one channel to Rx on the 467 channels and then Tx on the 462 channels. BUT since it can do dual monitor, it works. Because it does NOT change channels when it hears on the other traffic. The DB-25g CANNOT work like the UV-9g. It has quad channel listen, so I figured I could set it up the same. NOPE. If I leave it set to Tx on anything as the primary and listen to a secondary channel, it switches the Tx to the channel it last heard traffic on. So if it is Tx on 462 and that is set to primary and Rx on 467 and it hears traffic on 462, it automatically switches the primary channel over to the secondary and the SR-1 plays back on 467. So no dice on a "duplex" store and forward/simplex repeater that way. HOWEVER, the DB-26g, unlike the UV-9g has no problem setting a channel to Rx on the 467 and Tx on the 462 channels. In fact, if you want, it'll take a custom offset. So you could Rx on 467.725 and Tx on 462.600 if you wanted, or whatever other combo, so long as they are valid GMRS channels, you can set it to Rx and Tx at any of those frequencies on one channel. Which is VERY nice. Not that I think I'd use that. But anyway, that is how I also got my "duplex" setup to work on the DB-25g. Ignoring the hardware troubleshoot, the actual channel setup is much simpler. Just program one to Rx on 467 and then Tx on 462 and then on my HTs or a car mobile radio I can just set a channel as a regular repeater channel to Rx on 462 and Tx on 467. Of course setting a PL code is important so you aren't just recording ANY traffic on that channel. And I did also verify that PL codes work with the DB-25g and the SR-1. Along the lines of the DB-25g duplex repeater using the TRRS port, it did occur to me you could probably setup a couple of HTs in a similar manner with the Tx one set in VOX and make a cross over cable so the mic and speaker are swapped going over to the other HT. Of course you'll need to deal with desense issues possibly, get a good duplexer or have antennas very widely separated, etc. And HTs are usually only rated to like 20% duty cycle. So you'll either need to set them to medium or low power and deal with very short range, or else it'll be extremely light duty. Simplex operation at least effectively doubles the duty cycle as the Tx radio operation is at half the actual conversation length. Which might take you from 3-5 minutes of operating at full power as a duplex repeater, and with the extra cooling between cycles, might get you like 8-15 minutes of near constant operation as a simplex repeater. Pure guessing here mind you. It could be more, it could be less. But it WILL be a lot longer (at a guess, 2.5-3x longer than in duplex). And setting it to medium power probably could be effectively unlimited duty cycle because its only Tx at most at 50%, and actually slightly less unless you want to shorten the SR-1 listen time to something impractically short. Because the default is 2 seconds. If it doesn't hear anything for 2 seconds, it switches to playback and you simplex repeater radio switches to Tx of the recording. So a 10 seconds message is going to have 2 extra seconds of "dead time" where the Simplex repeater is listening, but on one is transmitting. On the Tx end from the Simplex repeater, it'll cut off those 2 seconds of dead air, but depending on how long your conversations are, you are still adding some percentage of "cool down" time to the duty cycle of the repeater.

Interesting on your use. I just posted a review of the ADS SR-1 that I picked up a few days ago. I am loving it. Great for testing radio equipment without annoying my wife or kids to help out. Plus in my neighborhood terrain can create a problem for talking to each other on HTs for things like trick or treating (and there are actually a couple of spots cell phones have no reception). My house being up on one of the low ridge lines should help. I haven't tested it yet, but having a high gain antenna 15ft above the ground, on a ridge that is about 20-30ft above the "valleys" next to it, and likely much easier to "see" in to valleys 2 or 3 or 4 ridges and a mile over, vs trying to reach another HT in a valley a mile and several ridges away. At least my prior experience with H777s (lower radio power and lower antenna gain) was from far to far there would be little to no reception. My UV-9g and Nagoya 771g is working with at least 3dB higher receive and 5dB higher transmit between the additional antenna gain as well as the extra radio power. But that may not still be enough over the longer ranges if both HTs are in separate "valleys" a good distance away. Even setting my base station to low power (~5w) to match the HTs, the antenna being much higher above the average local terrain, as well as being a 6dBi antenna gains an additional 3dB advantage, plus the much higher height to reduce terrain interference. Anyway, I can see how simplex repeaters can be annoying. I have it setup so that the HTs can use a repeater channel with PL code to talk to the ADS SR-1 equipped radio, which will listen on the higher repeater channel and then broadcast on the lower channel that the HTs are set to listen to. So no one is hearing the same broadcast twice. It makes conversations take longer, but it avoids that additional annoyance of "gee, did anyone hear me?" wait a minute or two to see if anyone responds and if no one does, then activate the repeater to rebroadcast at that point. So I think I'd rather it parrot every transmission, than set it to only repeat on command. If everything was set to a simplex channel, then yeah, I'd rather only trigger it to broadcast on command. I am probably going to pickup a 2nd ADS SR-1 so I can run it as a radio in an ammo can portable repeater. Just for fun. Then use this first one for my house base station as a repeater. Or since I have the same radio in my car, it makes it easy to take along if I want or need to setup my car GMRS radio as a repeater for HTs. I am also (at some point, if my wife ever figures out what is happening to my kids play set that is sitting on my trailer) turning a trailer in to a tear drop camper. The repeater can also come along with the radio I plan to put in the camper (use an extendable pole as an antenna mast so I can get something medium gain, 4.2-6dBi, up about 12-15ft off the ground). On the OPs original question, I am very interested. Out of curiosity, OP, are you looking for do something like radio to text? Radio to VOIP?

I thought I’d post a review of the ADS SR-1 simplex repeater. This little sucker is awesome. A simplex repeater is sort of a glorified voice mail system that can automatically repeater transmissions. In the case of the ADS SR-1 it has a lot of options. You can record messages (up to 174s total, or for like $12 more up to I think about 30 minutes), you can set it to automatically repeat the last message (or not). You can set it up as a station identifier/annunciator. More that I am not thinking of I am sure. Commands are accessed through touch tone (including a security code if you wish). I got this as much to have a cheap (in $, not in quality) simplex repeater for family/disaster use and for radio testing. Nothing says “I am not testing X right now” like not having a 2nd person available to test with. Especially if X person happens to be a wife or kids that often roll their eyes at you. I can wander hither and yon cos playing the Verizon guy from the ‘00s, “can you hear me now” and not test familial patients. me a downside to simplex repeaters is communications take twice as long. Because it’s recording your transmission and then rebroadcasting it with a slight delay (the SR-1 can be programmed for the length of delay. Default is 2 seconds. Basically it waits to make sure you’ve really for sure finished broadcasting before it begins repeating). man even more annoying issue is because it is simplex, you are broadcast and listening on the same frequency. Supposedly. So if you are in radio range of each other and the repeater, both people hear the transmissions twice. Once when you broadcast and a 2nd time when it is repeated. now GMRS equipment can use repeater channels to listen on the lower 462MHz frequencies and broadcast at the 467 frequencies. At least with the equipment I’ve tested, equipment not designed to be used as a repeater (standard HTs at least), cannot be used with a negative offset. Even if the frequencies are valid channels. For instance, I can set my UV-9g to listen at 462.600 and broadcast at 467.600 on a repeater channel. But I cannot then set it to listen at 467.600 and broadcast at 462.600 as one channel. maybe ADS-SR-1 is not itself a radio. It has to be attached to one through an audio to RJ45 jack. The company that makes it, makes several premade cables or you can fashion your own. The SR-1 can be powered off the radio if your radio jack has a 8v line. It turns out my Radioddity DB-25g has 8v out! So I went to fashion a custom patch cable. But alas it doesn’t have audio out on its handset jack. Only audio in and data in. So it won’t work. However it does have a headset audio jack on the back that is a 4-terminal ground-audio in-audio out-PTT style jack. So I can custom make a 3.5 audio to RJ45 jack for only a few dollars (the company has a Yaesu 3.5 to RJ45 premade cable. But the DB-25g has the ground and PTT terminals of the jack reversed compared to Yaesu. So I have to custom wire one). I haven’t been able to test with my DB-25g yet as I have cables income so I can custom make one. anyway, I tested in pure simplex with my H-777 and a UV-9g for a bit using a K-cable for the h777. Works great. I then grabbed a UV-9g data cable to K adapter and sat down this morning to get the ADS-SR-1 working with my Uv-9g. I figured I could set it up so my HTs would just use a repeater channel and the Uv-9g setup as a repeater could use a negative offset so it would Karen at 467 and broadcast on 462. Problem solved. If you were in radio range of the repeater and both parties using it, you would put hear the same broadcast twice. You’d just have the time lag before you head the other party’s message. then no dice. I can set a negative offset, but the Uv-9g won’t broadcast with it. It can listen on the repeater channel. After an hour of messing with it I realized something. The Uv-9g has a dual channel listen mode. I wonder if I have it set to simplex/non-repeater channels if it can then listen on the 467 channel, but broadcast on the separate simplex 462 channel? success! So if I have the primary channel set to 462.725MHz and the secondary channel to 467.725MHz, it’ll listen to both, but only broadcast on 462.725. Then on the radios I want to use to talk to each other, I just set it on repeater channel 22 and those radios will Tx at 467.725 and then listen only on 462.725! So they won’t hear each other at all. But the Uv-9g setup as the simplex repeater can hear them on the repeater channel and broadcast at the lower channel they will hear. mine the downside is the repeater is sensitive to hear both 467.725 and 462.725. So if anyone is using channel 22, it will also repeat those transmissions back. However, using a PL code, the simplex repeater is NOT keyed unless the radios involved are using the same PL code. I’ve tested multiple times. So, so long as nobody is using channel 22 and my PL code, all functions as it should. my I am feeling good about my neat bit of problem solving. a couple last things, the SR-1 can also operate off two AA batteries. The literature says to use only Alkaline or Lithium batteries. However, I have a couple high capacity NiMH batteries it is working off of just fine. I can’t comment on battery life of it yet. A couple reviews I’ve read said a few days of alkaline batteries. It also uses a 5.5x2.5mm DC barrel connector and can run off 3-24v input. I’ve tested with a 5v and 12v adapter and it’s worked fine. At some point I am going to assemble an ammo can field repeater out of this. Probably with a UV-5 radio. There is a “batteryless” 12v cigarette adapter made for it. My plan is, out the radio and ADS-SR-1 in the ammo can with a 12v AGM battery, maybe around 7-10ah capacity. That should give both the repeater and radio several days of power (heck, maybe more than a week) even with modest use. Probably even a couple of days with extremely heavy use. One advantage of a simplex repeater in this scenario is it can only Tx at most 50% duty cycle as it’s listening half the time. Then pack a 10-20w solar panel for it. Instal bulkhead water proof DC connector and antenna jack on the can. Set somewhere with a bit of sun (even just a couple of hours a day) and the thing could probably operate indefinitely. I’ll get a 2nd SR-1 to run at my house for my base station for repeating. It’ll help out with activities like trick or treating as my neighborhood is kind of hilly (river valley with a number of ridges) and my house is on one of the taller ridges. With the antenna in my attic that gives me a relatively high vantage point to relay between HTs if two are trying to talk to each other while both are in valleys between ridges. They aren’t especially big ridges, but having a 20-50ft tall ridge completely between HTs for sure hurts. This will hopefully help with that significantly.

Unless I've missed something, the 771g is 2.6dBd, 4.75dBi. It is a 5/8 wave length antenna. The shorter 701g is a 1/4 wave and 2.15dBi. Its a similar gain and size to the UT-72 NMO mount antenna for use on a car. I am reasonably impressed with mine. I've tested a few antennas now. One of those tactical, foldable antennas (HYS in this case, Abbree also makes them), 771g, the rubber ducky that came with my Retevis H777, the tiny dual band whip that came on my UV-9g and a magic stick 5/8 extendable antenna. I can't speak for exact gain as I don't have the equipment to test that. For SWR, the 771g was by far the best. I was clocking in around 1.7SWR. The HYS folded was about 2, unfolded it was about 3.5. The magic stick collapsed is about 1.9, but 3.1 extended. The rubber ducky from my H777 is about 2.6. The tiny dual band whip from my UV-9g is about 2.3. For reception, its a tossup between the magic stick extended and the Nagoya 771g. I'd give maybe a slight edge of the Nagoya 771g. But for transmission, well again, I don't have a good way to test that without a lot more time and effort, but the much lower SWR of the Nagoya should mean much better Tx as you'd be losing about 20% due to standing wave reflections (assuming the radio isn't pulling power because of that much getting reflected back). They are both 5/8 wave length antennas with the magic stick extended, so it should be the same gain. I have not tried a super stick. I'll probably get one at some point. I am a bit concerned about low temperature performance as it gets floppy in really cold weather...and well I've got enough excuses to want or need to use my radios in cold weather here in Maryland. I don't need an antenna that has erectile problems if the temp is dropping in to the 30s or colder. Which is a third of the year here. But its cheap enough, I'll try it. Probably needs to be tuned (cut to length) to maximize performance on GMRS. Depends on how mobile you mean though. Even though they have the same theoretical gain, the UT-72 on the roof of my car has slightly better receive and transmit performance from what I can tell even over the 14' of RG-58 even though they are both supposedly 4.75dBi. Bonus points that the UT-72 measures 1.01SWR versus the 1.7 on my 771g. Probably that, plus a bit of gain in picking up reflections off the roof of my car is the deciding factor. Its a very small difference in performance though. If you really want an even more effective setup, put a rooftop or attic high gain antenna up and run some LMR400 coax down to your HT and use an SMA to So239 adapter. I definitely get much better range performance on my UV-9g connected to my attic 6dBi antenna than my 771g from ground level (or even standing on the roof). Though that setup is very much not mobile. If you stretch your definition of mobile, you could do a quicky setup with an extendable paint pole, tripod, a length of high quality coax and either a yagi antenna to go on the pole or a modest high gain antenna in the 6-7.2dBi range (HYS350-500MHz tunable antenna (6dBi) or Diamond XT50 (7.2dBi for UHF)). That is car mobile easily, or not too bad to backpack in if your intent was specifically to be carrying coms in to the backwoods for a setup (versus you are just bringing coms with you). Though at that point, you might as well get a battery, voltage converter and a mobile base station for a lot more transmit power too. Sorry, probably way more information than you were looking for. The short story is, "yes, the Nagoya 771g is about the best you are likely to get ON the radio, but if you don't mind not portable or not very portable, then the sky is the limit". IMHO, I'd take the antenna that came with your GM-30 with you with the 771g. The 771g will be a lot better, but there are plenty of times that is more than enough. I can get decent reception through most of my neighborhood, even with the terrain features I have half a mile from my house with the fairly short whip antenna that came on my UV-9g. And with an HT, you are usually going to be limited more by terrain than you will be by obstructions or line of sight distance limitations. That said, I can hit a repeater 70 miles away not far from my house with the 771g on my UV-9g (the location is not too far from my house where I can hit the repeater. The repeater is of course far away). With the little whip 1/4 wave antenna I can't really hit said repeater (I can get a response, but my Tx isn't intelligible, and Rx is spotty).

I appreciate some of the thoughts on the KG-1000g. I've been considering one as a base station. The volume variability sounds like more of a problem than the fan. One thought on it, if you are using it as a base station is consider making a mounting box for it and a larger fan. So long as you mounted it so it is pulling air through the chassis as well as over the radio, that'll probably keep it fairly cool. then you could use a quiet 60mm fan or similar rather than the tiny little 25mm fan that it is equipped with. I've thought about something like that for my DB-25g. The fan there only kicks on when it gets warm, but that's after maybe 15-20 seconds of Tx at full power and it'll typically spin down after maybe 10 seconds of ceasing Tx. I've yet to talk for a REALLY long time to see how hot it'll get and how long the fan will stay on, but in reading a couple of reviews you can talk long enough it'll shut down from heat. If it has been used a fair amount, the fan will kick back on after just a couple of seconds of Tx. its fairly noisy, but not oppressive.

The name is Matt. I am in central Maryland. On GMRS it is relatively quiet here. Maybe 95% quiet airwaves over the course of a week. The local repeater has a net check-in and most of the traffic I hear in my area is using that repeater. Or I'll hear inter-vehicle coms on the interstate that passes a couple of miles away every once in awhile. Or that is what it sounds like it is. As for my knowledge, hard earned over a lifetime. My Dad taught me a bit on how to work on cars and home renovation, but not a ton. I met my wife soon after college, got married pretty fast and welcomed kids not much past our first anniversary and she had to stop working because we couldn't afford child care. So any kind of fixing up of houses ended up being us having to work on them because there was no way we could afford contractors to do the work. It turned in to something I enjoyed a lot. So almost 20 years on, I've done manager renovations to several houses, built an addition on my last house and I've done just about everything other than gas fitting and foundation work (structure, insulation, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, siding, roofing, masonry). Welding and now radios are my new hobbies ? So far radios have proven less dangerous. I've found if I sit my UV-9g next to me while I work (I work from home) and leave it scanning I'll usually pick-up some chatter on a channel every once in awhile. A lot of times it is just maybe a couple or a few minutes that are probably guys talking to each other between vehicles on the interstate before they are out of range. There are a few guys in my area that seem to have regular, scheduled conversations at about the same time on the same days over the course of a week. Right now I am trying to get GMRS communications to work between my house and my Brother-in-law's house. We only live about 4 miles apart, but we've got a low ridge between us. So far, no luck with the equipment I have, but I am seeing if getting an antenna up higher at his house and maybe a directional (yagi) antenna on his end or both our ends might be enough to get clear communications. We can use the repeater though. For the repeater 70 miles away, that is using my UV-9g and Nagoya 771g on it. Full quieting on the repeater. Its weak, but intelligible. From my car and UT-72 on the roof of the car, with a DB-25g reception is stronger at the repeater end. For the repeater near my house and attic 6dBi HYS 350-500MHz antenna that the radio (DB-25g) you see in the picture I posted hooked up to, I can hit the repeater from my UV-9g connected up to the antenna. I'd imagine the received signal is stronger from the DB-25g. With just the 771g on my UV-9g I cannot hit the local repeater unless I get up on my roof in just the right spot and its weak reception at best. It was hit and miss getting my attic, higher gain, antenna located in a sweet spot with okay reception.

In central Maryland mostly I am hearing HAMs talking to other HAMs on GMRS. Or at least guys chatting about HAM equipment they want to get and getting advice from someone else. That and guys just generally chatting on how things are going, what were you doing last week. Our local Civil Air Patrol wing also uses GMRS for SAR ground communications (and of course someone on Air Band when chatting with any SAR planes). But in terms of traffic? There seem to be a small number of guys who have a regular talk time or at least I hear them on weekends and weekdays chatting around the same time on certain days and the sound familiar/talk about the same kinds of stuff. So I assume it is the same guys. I haven't paid much attention to call signs they are using. Of course our local REACT club/organization uses the repeater for events and tie up airwaves sometimes with larger events they help with and during some disasters, though I haven't been listening in/involved in GMRS long enough to hear much of that. But in terms of overall use? Now that I have my attic antenna up and mobile radio setup as a base station, I've had it setup scanning a couple of times when I've been in the room working out (its in one of my storage/utility rooms that is setup for an exercise room) or the next room working on other hobbies. Maybe 3-4hrs total and I heard all of one broadcast on one channel. Quiet otherwise. On my UV-9g that I've been playing around with more the last couple of weeks I'll leave setup scanning sometimes while I work in my office (other side of the house from where my base station is setup. My wife doesn't want the radio in the office permanently and it would also be the difference of 35ft of KMR400 coax for a permanent installation versus probably 75, plus needing to open up the walls, rather than dropping it in to my basement through existing conduit). Anyway, that's more when I am hearing the regular talkers on a couple of channels. Mostly using the repeater, but not entirely. I've also picked up some coms that are likely people talking vehicle to vehicle on the interstate a distance away. But even being in a fairly populous county, possibly in part because of terrain, within my radio horizon on GMRS the air waves are probably 97% empty over the course of the week. But even the repeater doesn't seem to get more than maybe 4-6% utilization normally (and that's factoring in weekly net check-ins). Not that I am complaining mind you. I am happier with it being pretty quiet, which means any use I have isn't pushing people out, or their use isn't impacting what use I want to have. Of course it does make it more difficult to setup equipment not having anyone to easily test with. Though I guess that in part means I just need to get friendlier on social media and try to (nicely) wrangle some of the REACT/GRMS facebook group members to help me test and make some friends to talk to.

I may be looking at the wrong charts, but I think the half power beam width of a 6dBi omni is around 42 degrees. A 10dBi would be around 25 degrees. A 15dBi would be about 14 degrees. Of course the closer to perpendicular the better, but being a few degrees off shouldn't noticeably impact the gain at all on a 6dBi. It seems to be once you start getting in to the 10+dBi range that it matters a lot for elevation and angle for far objects. Of course with an HT it matters a fair amount because you might be holding it at a funky angle, which can be problematic for a hair gain antenna (though you have to be holding it pretty wrong, even with like a 4.2dBi antenna). Based on the near ridge, its probably only around 1-2 degrees above perpendicular in respect to my antenna and the repeater is roughly level with my antenna (this is a guess because I don't know the exact AGL of the tower or the exact height, but my house is about 50-60ft higher elevation, the tower I think is probably around 150ft tall, but it is something like 16 miles away so the curve of the Earth reduces the LOS angle a fair amount). Anyway, at least to the repeater I did a lot of playing around with it and my antenna is almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground and that was the best signal strength on receiving (I can't test Tx at the repeater end without someone to help out). I did test at my BIL's. No joy. The reception near my kids' ES is bad at best, but I can get reception. It is fractionally better at the entrance to my BIL's neighborhood a quarter mile up the street (probably because no large brick and cinderblock building in the way and it is maybe 10ft higher elevation). Once I start driving in to the neighborhood though total loss of signal. Even on Monitor I couldn't pick anything up from my house with my son broadcasting. That said, he didn't have it on monitor. I don't think he was actively trying to broadcast to me. I can easily hit the repeater from my BIL's house. So that is something. We should be able to use the repeater to communicate. Though I'd still like to manage simplex communications between our houses. I am going to go further down the rabbit hole and try getting a 5 element HYS UHF Yagi. It has pretty good reviews and takes down in to two pieces. So it is fairly manportable if I ever have such a fun project. Anyway, I am thinking that, an extendable 12ft painting pole that I think will adapt to my camera tripod and 25ft of KMR400 coax should get me a setup I can take over to my BILs, setup, get me several dB higher gain than the UT-72 on the roof of my car and I can probably get it 7-10ft higher elevation. I still have some hope that 4-5dB more gain at his end and a bit of extra elevation might get us something. Of course there is a lot more juice to the squeeze. Attic/roof mounting would gain a further 6-10ft over my planned portable setup. An 11dBi Yagi on both ends is yet another 7dB gain over this next test setup. More powerful radios would be 4-5dB more gain. We have some options still. But before going $$$ to try to get it to work, I figure my planned portable setup would be practical and useful for other projects without sunk cost on something I'd have no real use for (Because if I got 11dBi Yagis, I don't see needing fix Yagi for anything other than trying to talk to my BIL. Sure, I guess I can set it up for higher gain to the repeater and leave the Omni for broadcast "locally" is something. But honestly that's probably what I'd do with the portable 9dBi Yagi is set it up in my attic for longer term use, but leaves me the option I can go up there, break it down and take it with me for a portable setup. If I can get SOMETHING out of this setup, that gives me the confidence that we can improve things. If I can't even get the slightest static filled murmur, I'd be willing to try moving the portable setup to my BIL's attic or upper story window to try again, but if that fails, I am not sure I want to pursue even more equipment. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations of what another 10-12dB of combined signal strength that higher gain and more powerful radios should get, but I'd think if I have 0 signal over background noise, that a 10-12dB increase would only at best give me poor connection if it does get me above the noise floor. And of course, it's possible that if both radios have been in Monitor rather than squelch, that my son might have been picking me up at my BIL's house and would then have transmitted back. My transmissions weren't strong enough to break squelch even at the lowest setting and his were intermittently breaking it, so I changed it to monitor and I could hear him (weakly) until I started getting back in to the neighborhood. But based on what he told me later, I don't think he was trying to periodically transmit to me, just responding to my broadcasts. So I have some hopes here. I am just not willing to dial it up to 11 with an investment of maybe $500-1000 of equipment when the terrain dictates there is no possibility of this working without one or both of us putting in a tower (not going to happen at our properties) or a tall mast (I doubt our spouses will allow that either). PS I'd just jump right in to testing that portable Yagi and radio from my BIL's 2nd story or attic, but they are still pretty tight on COVID restrictions with two little kids as they can't be vaccinated yet even though all adults and all my kids are vaccinated. I work with what I've got, not what I want. And at least right now and I don't have a 2nd power solution for my 2nd DB-25g other than powering it from my car. So one of us would need to get a 13.8v power supply to test from his house.

What I find amusing is in my area that should be very true and might be. Without testing to see if they are all live, just looking at the list of repeaters here for my state (Maryland), many of them use the same frequency and even PL code. I don't think there is much geographic overlap on their coverage as most seem to be fairly limited coverage (maybe 10-20 mile radius), but 2-3 of them almost certainly overlap if the estimated coverage is correct. Fortunately the 3 higher coverage repeaters that for sure overlap use different frequencies. I've actually be kind of curious to try out that Retevis brief case repeater for personal use (not setup as a general access repeater). My house is on a bit of a ridge locally (I mean hyper local, like in my neighborhood, not the larger geographic area where my house/neighborhood is on the backside of a ridge down to a river valley. Its central Maryland, so "valley" and "ridge" are relative). Anyway, I've been kind of curious to try getting it and taking it up one of my taller and straighter trees. Setup a small platform to host it on the tree, lead acid battery, 12V DC output and a solar panel to keep it charged. That would likely significantly increase the range of my HTs in my neighborhood. Granted the last time I really tested their coverage was with my Retevis H777 cheapo (though decent-ish) HTs. When I first got my GMRS license I got 5 of them for my whole family and I tend to pass them out for things like Halloween for my kids or I take one with me over to a friend/neighbor's house as I tend to get side-tracked by him and his offers of chatting and drinking and cell reception at his place, even though it is only a few hundred yards away, sucks. So my wife can buzz me to remind me I said I'd be home 2hrs before and she is going to order pizza if I don't come home and make dinner like I promised I would... Anyway, they work surprisingly well. But still weak in a lot of places and some dead zones. Now that I've finally "gotten serious" about radio/GMRS and started getting better equipment and learning about it all more that might not be as much of an issue. I'll test my UV9g HTs against my H777. I suspect the UV9g on their own will help out significantly with reach. I have the older style H777 which I can't find out too much info on, but I am pretty sure are narrow band only and I think 2.5 or 3w and have the typical crappy antennas. The UV9g I have has probably not a much better rubber ducky, but it is a measured 4.5w of transmit power (5 claimed), wide band and I have a Nogoya 771g antenna on it. I just bought a second UV9g for more of the family camping/backpacking stuff to give out one to whatever person/group is wandering off and keep one with me. I'll get 3 more at some point so everyone can have one. But I'd imagine having a low power repeater 30ft off the ground on my "ridge" would be pretty helpful to extend reach. The local terrain over the surrounding mile or two has plenty of creek bottoms, hillocks, and sunken roads that can vary the terrain height by +/-30ft over 200-500ft. I am not sure reception will be that big a deal with the UV9g to my house base station (which I'll test and just finished installing yesterday) which is a radioddity DB-25g in my basement run to a 6dBi HYS 350-500MHz antenna mounted in my attic about 13ft AGL. But from HT to HT if someone is in one of the creek bottoms to another one is probably dicey, even with the nicer HTs and higher gain antennas. But hitting off a repeater... Another option would be just mounting the repeater in my attic, though that would get the antenna significantly lower.